


it's no better to be safe than sorry

by kneworder



Series: i've got the spirit (lose the feeling) - ben oneshots [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Ben Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Ben Hargreeves-centric, Domestic, Five leaving made the family implode send tweet, Gen, No Incest, at least the first part is, multiple references to the song take on me bc like luther i too love 80s music, the second part is in a literal alley, you guys i get so emo about ben it's insane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:26:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28866249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kneworder/pseuds/kneworder
Summary: "Ben settles back into his desk chair and breathes a contented sigh. He loves Saturdays, the only day they’re allowed free time. Tomorrow, personal training will begin again and set them each back on edge, one by one. But for now, Ben is happy to bask in his momentary freedom for as long as it lasts."--Ben, his family, and Five, in childhood and (young) adulthood.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves & Number Five | The Boy, Ben Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves
Series: i've got the spirit (lose the feeling) - ben oneshots [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2116902
Comments: 7
Kudos: 29





	it's no better to be safe than sorry

**Author's Note:**

> title from Take On Me by a-ha

“It doesn’t-- I mean, it doesn’t really _mean_ anything, it’s just--” 

Ben cuts her off, “It’s important to you. That’s meaning enough, I think.” 

Vanya colors, looking back down to the violin in her lap. “I don’t think dad even cares,” she says softly. 

“Fuck dad,” Five says from where he’s thumbing through _String Theory: An Exploration_ on the floor. “Who cares what he thinks?” 

Ben remembers every group exercise Five has pushed himself to win and thinks, _You do_. Instead, he says, “Dad doesn’t have to care for it to matter.” 

Vanya brushes her fingers across the instrument’s strings. “I don’t even know how to play it yet,” she breathes. 

“You’ll figure it out,” says Five. He takes a pencil from its position behind his ear and makes a mark in the book. “And once you do, you can play for us.” 

Ben snorts. “It’ll be nice to hear something other than Luther’s 80s records for a change.” 

Five jabs his pencil in Ben’s direction, “Hey, Tiffany is timeless.” He tilts his head back to look Vanya in the eye. “But Ben is right. You’re gonna be great, Vanya.” 

Ben settles back into his desk chair and breathes a contented sigh. He loves Saturdays, the only day they’re allowed free time. Tomorrow, personal training will begin again and set them each back on edge, one by one. But for now, Ben is happy to bask in his momentary freedom for as long as it lasts. Morton Harket’s soulful wailing drifts up from Luther’s room, Five turns a page of his book, and Ben smiles softly. 

It’s mundane. 

It’s the best day Ben’s had in a long while. 

A furious knocking at the door breaks the comfortable silence, and Ben barely has time to stand before Klaus is throwing himself inside. “Are you really _reading_ ?” he crows in lieu of greeting, snatching Five’s book out of his hands and scanning the pages. “We get half an hour every week to do what we want, and you’re _studying_?” 

“Jesus, Klaus!” Five growls. His hands flash blue briefly and Klaus yelps as the book in his hands is replaced with Five’s pencil. Five flips back to his page and says, “What do you want?” 

Klaus stalks his way to where Vanya is sitting on Ben’s bedspread and flops down next to her. “Must I always _want_ something to spend time with my family?” he sighs. 

The three others level him with a look. 

“Fine, fine,” Klaus relents, waving a hand in the air. “Allison’s off dancing with Luther or whatever and Diego’s door is locked. Happy?” He sits up. “Hey, whoa, is that a violin?” 

Vanya startles at being addressed. “Uh, yeah,” she says. She sits up straighter. “I’m going to learn soon.” Ben thinks she’s never said anything with more conviction. 

“What’d Diego do?” Five asks. His hand drifts up to his ear before he remembers Klaus has his pencil. He snaps his fingers at Klaus until he notices. 

“No idea,” Klaus yawns. He tosses Five’s pencil at him, missing by a solid three feet and hitting Ben’s shoes. “I tried picking the lock but he told me not to bother, so I didn’t.” 

Ben kicks Five’s pencil back in his direction. “It’s not because of yesterday, right? I mean, it wasn’t _that_ bad.” 

Klaus snorts. “Doesn’t have to be bad for dad to be pissed.” 

“Did Luther tell him?” Five says, then catches himself. “Of course he did.” 

“Um, guys?” Vanya’s timid voice cuts in, “What happened yesterday?” 

For a moment, no one answers. Ben feels the tension that had been gloriously absent all morning reappear. 

Sometimes, Ben doesn’t know how to talk to Vanya. He knows he’s better at it than most of his siblings, but there’s a certain kind of bond the rest of them share that she’s just exempt from. It’s not her fault that she’s never watched light fade from the eyes of someone they couldn’t save, or felt blood coat her fingers while putting pressure on a sibling’s bullet wound. Ben’s killed people -- by now, almost all of them have. She doesn’t have to carry the burden of heroism nor its consequences, and Ben’s always felt wrong trying to describe them to her. 

“He froze,” Five says, and he’s always been the best at bridging the chasm between Vanya and the rest. “I think he was trying to tell the guy something and couldn’t get it out. I don’t know, I didn’t get a good look.” He shrugs, clenched hands his only sign of emotion. “Either way, Allison almost got hit.” 

Vanya looks like she wants to ask more, biting her lip and fixing Five with a hesitant look. _Please don’t_ , Ben thinks, _Please leave it alone_. 

“Is that what happened?” Klaus shouts, and Ben exhales. “Oh, of _course_ Luther told dad, if it was _Allison_.” He shakes his head. “He’s lucky he just got locked in.” 

“Probably extra training, too,” Five muses. He picks up his pencil. “Serves him right. He shouldn’t’ve froze.” 

Klaus’ smile gets a little strained around the edges. “Ow, harsh, Number Five!” 

“We’re supposed to go public next year,” Five snaps. “We can’t afford to mess up like that, not anymore.” 

Klaus raises an eyebrow. “Oh, bold words from the guy who jumped right into that arms deal in Lansing without telling anyone.” 

“What was I supposed to do, wait for Luther to tell me to do exactly what I did but slower?” 

“Hey, I’m just the lowly lookout, but even I know you’re supposed to listen to the plan.” 

“I had my own plan! And I had it covered!” 

“I don’t know if I’d call nearly losing that last hostage ‘having it covered,’ but you know, tomato, to-mah-to.” 

Five goes deathly pale. Vanya makes desperate eye contact with Ben, who can feel the last threads of his pleasant morning slipping away. “Hey, guys?” he says, “Can we maybe not fight during free time?” 

“Sure thing, Benerino!” Klaus says, but doesn’t look away from Five. 

Five grits his teeth and says nothing. 

“So, Vanya --” Ben says, but a brisk knock at the door cuts him off. 

“Children!” Grace calls, “Lunchtime!” 

A flash of blue in Ben’s peripheral is all that alerts him of Five’s departure. 

“Shall we?” Klaus says, gesturing to the door, and just like that, another week starts. 

…

Klaus laughs, long and high pitched and tired. “God, I was so _mad_ at him for that. I thought he’d let that guy die and haunt me for the rest of my fucking life.” The laughter peters out. He sniffs. “Or that he’d get killed and haunt me himself.” 

Ben stills. He tries to swallow and doesn’t know if it’s the lump in his throat or his ghost status that prevents him from doing so. 

“Can you imagine?” Klaus says, and he’s laughing again, “If it was Five? Little prick would never let me live anything down.” 

_And I will?_ Ben thinks, but stays quiet. He presses the back of his head against the alley wall and concentrates on not slipping through it. 

“I’ve never seen him, you know,” Klaus continues, as if Ben hasn’t heard this a million times before. As if Klaus has ever been sober enough for it to matter. “Not once. I’ve tried to -- you know I’ve tried. You… you know I’ve tried.” 

“Go to sleep, Klaus,” Ben whispers. He doesn’t look down. He doesn’t want to see Klaus’ pupils eclipsing the green of his eyes, doesn’t want to know if their glaze has turned grief dull or sharp. 

Klaus’ coat rustles against the street’s debris. “Yeah, okay,” he says, equally quiet, and Ben finds he doesn’t need to look to know that whatever pills his brother managed to get his hands on tonight weren’t enough to soften the date’s blow. 

November 10th, 2012. Ten years. 

Ben should check on Vanya -- he does that sometimes, when Klaus is doing things he pretends he doesn’t know about --, but he isn’t sure if he really has a right to. They’d drifted apart long before Ben’s own day of reckoning. 

Ben thinks it might have been his job to keep them together. He was in the middle, after all, Five-Six-Seven, a little trifecta of family within family. But Five was the one who took on that responsibility, and without him, Six-Seven just became Ben and Vanya, two kids with nothing in common but loss. 

Ben wishes he hadn’t pushed her away. 

There’s a lot he wishes he’d done, but that’s right up there with not falling into step behind Dad and fighting the Horror before it took him. 

(Each of his big wishes are fruitless. Vanya was too full of anger to forgive Ben’s own. Dad never would have accepted anything less than perfection, Ben couldn’t let Five’s protector role go unfilled. The Horror would have torn him to pieces no matter how hard he fought. 

Ben still wishes, more than anything, that he’d _tried_.)

“Think we’ll see Diego tonight?” Klaus says, face buried in his coat. Ben looks. There’s a cigarette butt three inches from Klaus’ head that Ben almost goes to kick away before he remembers he can’t. Even after all this time, he still forgets. 

“Maybe.” If he knows Diego -- and he likes to think he does, after they spent their teen years spiraling together --, he’ll spend the night on the street, purveying their father’s brand of justice and his own definition of heroism in an effort to take back a modicum of control. “He’s probably around.” 

“That’d be nice,” and Klaus is slurring now, meaning the pills are finally doing exactly what his brother wants them to and knocking him out, “I so rarely entertain company these days.” 

A neon sign flickers on across the alley, bright blue light spilling across Ben’s shoes and advertising _Girls, Girls, Girls!._ Klaus doesn’t seem to notice. 

Ben stares into the blue and listens to people passing the alley in various states of drunkenness. Some tacky bar down the street is blasting a-ha, so loud Ben can hardly stand it. He hasn’t seen Luther since Klaus left home, didn’t see him happy enough to play records long before that. Once Allison went to pretend she was normal in LA, he became more and more withdrawn until Luther disappeared and the only words that fell out of his mouth were Dad’s. 

Ben slides down to the ground, his back dipping into the cold stone wall briefly before he jerks out of it. 

“Hey, Ben?” Klaus murmurs. “Can you…?”

“Yeah,” Ben says. “I’m not going anywhere tonight.” 

He watches the sidewalk carefully. Listens to the raucous laughter of people stumbling out of clubs. Looks at the eyeliner smudged carelessly across his brother’s eyelids. 

November 10th, 2002, Five walked out and never came back. Ben didn’t even look up when he left. 

Ten years. 

To the people passing by, it’s just another Saturday. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> (I hc that Five's disappearance had a profound effect on Ben and how he interacted with his siblings, namely bc I hc that Ben and Five were close as kids. there's a lot that I'd like to get into about Ben's teenage years, but we'll see if I ever get around to doing so!)  
> thank you for reading!  
> come talk to me on [tumblr!](https://kneworder.tumblr.com/)


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